Back in the late 1990s, a president frotting an intern in the Oval Office bathroom and depositing his DNA on her blue Gap dress was the apogee of filthy oversharing. But reading Monica Lewinsky’s Vanity Fair reflections on the Bill Clinton affair, how oddly innocent it all seems now. In that

The election leaflet on my doormat had an eye-catching pledge. If re-elected, Southwark’s Labour council would “make swimming and gyms free for all residents”. My first thought, I confess, was selfish: my local pool will be a fish-farm of breast-stroking fools; I’ll never get a go on the running

My friend was amazed when her mother-in-law Val announced she was off to a Pink concert. Why would a 79-year-old suburban grandmother want to see a multi-pierced rocker perform Get the Party Started and F***in’ Perfect? But Val has changed. Five years ago, bored and alone in her too-big family

I just met a man so colour-blind he sees the world only in sepia. To him magenta is indistinguishable from aquamarine. He can use traffic lights only by remembering red is at the top and needs a friend when clothes-shopping to avoid orange shirts. He can’t read a Tube map at all. His is a rare

What if terrorists broke into Roedean? Men with guns, faces covered, kill security guards, batter down the doors of dormitories where girls preparing to sit their GCSEs are asleep. As the teenagers wake in horror, the men select several hundred pupils, round them up, drag them outside to waiting

As we watched William and Kate race each other furiously round Auckland harbour, the duchess’s famous hair stuffed under a baseball cap and her face rigid with concentration, my husband said: “Do they remind you of anyone?” Yes, if the New Zealand authorities were foolhardy enough to give us a

Even before I see Kathleen Turner, I hear The Voice rumbling from the next room. It’s an octave lower than it was for her cartoon-siren turn as Jessica Rabbit; nowadays when calling room service Turner is often addressed as “sir”. The Voice is husky, seductive and after-hours, but also imperative.

There was an outcry when Peaches Geldof’s death led the BBC News. Who was she anyway but a “daughter of . . .” who parlayed her hereditary fame into a bit of modelling, a little journalism, some tattoos and flame-outs before settling down to make babies. No Oscar winner or Nobel laureate, she

There should be a word for the feeling right before holding a party, when food is laid out, balloons are bobbing, champagne flutes are awaiting fizz. And you, the host, torn between throwing up and leaving the country, hear a question looping in your head: what if no one comes? It could be one of

When I first saw cigarette packs in Bangkok duty-free, plastered in blackened tumours, gangrenous feet with yellow toenails and shuddersome dental shot, I assumed they were a marketing joke. Perhaps from the same sick genius who created that 1990s fag, Death. But the Government’s decision to